With less than two weeks to go before the national women’s wheelchair championships, team B.C. is looking good, according to top coach Tim Frick, who watched with approval while some members of the Breakers practiced at the Timms Community Centre gymnasium in Langley City on Sunday morning, March 10.
“I’m pleasantly surprised, actually,” Frick commented.
“Last year at nationals, the team struggled a little bit,” Frick recalled.
“I think this year, they’re a little bit stronger. Some of the athletes are older, more mature, more experienced and they’re doing a great job.”
Frick was part of the weekend Breakers Festival, an annual women’s-only wheelchair basketball festival organized by the non-profit B.C. Wheelchair Basketball Society (BCWBS) .
It offered skills sessions, and lots of games led by experienced coaches, for women and girl players over two days “in a space centered around women’s experiences, with physical disabilities or able-bodied” as the registration notice described.
“I’ve been involved with the Breakers program in B.C. here for probably 30 years now,” Frick said.
“It’s pretty exciting that we can host our annual festival at Timms center. It’s a wonderful facility.”
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Nadine Barbisan, director of the BCWBS Let’s Play program, said “we actually have someone who came up from the States to to join us to get some more experience, because we have coach Tim Frick.”
“If you Google Tim Frick, you’ll find a very long list of his contributions to wheelchair basketball across Canada and internationally – he was Terry Fox’s coach and Rick Hansen’s friend-slash-coach,” Barbison explained.
Frick first met Rick Hansen in 1977 as a physical education student at UBC. He coached Hansen in marathons and also helped launch the Man in Motion Tour that covered 40,000 km through 34 countries raising awareness about the potential of people with disabilities. Frick coached Terry Fox in track and wheelchair volleyball, and played with him in wheelchair basketball.
“I’ve been pretty lucky to have coached Terry and Rick,” Frick told the Langley Advance Times.
As head coach of the Canadian Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team, Frick led Canada to an 11-year undefeated streak, including three consecutive Paralympic gold medals (1992, 1996, 2000) and four consecutive World Championship titles (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006).
A member of the Order of Canada and Order of British Columbia, Frick has been inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (2014), Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame (2013), and the Wheelchair Basketball Canada Hall of Fame (2012), among many other honours.
The 2024 CWBL Women’s National Championship will take place on March 22-24 at Collège La Cité in Ottawa.
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